Blog #2: Rising Waters: Implcations and Actions

As professor Angelo Spillo and I continue our research regarding rising waters, we are gaining further insight into the possible actions that are being proposed to help minimize the impact of rising waters in New York City. While Westchester County is a densely populated area that sits very close to sea level, we are still taking time to reach out to the Westchester communities in hopes of determining what proposed actions are being set out against the threat of rising waters.

As for New York City, we have recently uncovered a nearly 20 billion dollar plan that has been proposed by former Mayor Bloomberg over summer 2013. While Bloomberg was in office, he was dedicated to warning people about the higher storm tides that are frequently engulfing the waterfront. His extensive plan includes defense mechanisms, such as new flood walls, storm barriers and upgrades to communication and power infrastructures. His plan includes natural buffers as well, such as using “sand dunes and plantings”, and “building up beaches” to help prevent flooding. Considering the city of New York is home to roughly 8 million people, Bloomberg also aims to put funds towards subway, transit, sewer, water, healthcare, energy and food distribution systems to ensure they run well into the future considering they are fragile and very important functions that hold the city together. Other aspects of the plan include creating more resilient buildings and devising a plan to have more accessible energy sources, such as fuel.

While Mayor Bloomberg is no longer in office, we are currently attempting to determine when this plan will be put into action, what the highest priorities of the plan are and whether or not people who live in floodplains will have to be relocate and if so to where.

This information regarding New York City is only a portion of what we hope to be the finished result. We are continuing our research and plan to have our final report published for the purpose of increasing awareness and encouraging even more actions of the local areas that are dealing with the threat of rising waters. We expect that if the public is aware of the severity of this issue, more will be done to help defend our city against it.